BOOK: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future
Humm, it sounds like a doom and gloom book - or a call for science curriculum that pops!! Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirshenbaum authors of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future. are doing the PR rounds this August to give us a flavor of their b... NPR's Science Friday, August 21st, 2009
Mr. Mooney was on NPR's Talk of the Nation that same day..."Can 'Unscientific America' Be Science Literate?"
Then Mr. Mooney had a Q&A in the Chicago Tribune Sept. 1, 2009 - I love his answer to the last question - a very humble and inspiring thought....
Chris Mooney: Q. and A. with author of 'Unscientific America'
Lori Kozlowski, Tribune Newspapers
September 1, 2009
"Science has become much less cool," writes journalist Chris Mooney in "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future." Mooney and co-author Sheril Kirshenbaum seek to explain why Americans minimize science in a time when, they say, we will need it most. "Americans built the bomb, reached the moon, decoded the genome, and created the Internet," the authors write. "And yet today this country is also home to a populace that, to an alarming extent, ignores scientific advances or outright rejects scientific principles." Mooney discusses that issue, along with why the decision to demote Pluto is significant, his concerns about vaccine rejecters and what scientists must do.
Why does the decision to reclassify Pluto matter? I was listening to science writer Dava Sobel ... talking about the Pluto decision and how she was on the committee that would have kept Pluto. And how the other astronomers didn't get it and overruled her committee. She said: People really care about this. The Pew Research Center did a study recently about the public understanding of science. And they asked what people knew. People knew that Pluto was no longer a planet. And they don't know many things. It is exceedingly rare that science does anything that reaches almost everybody anymore. So, when you get your moment to put it all before everybody, you don't want it to be a Pluto moment.
What about the vaccine skeptic movement? It bubbled up originally for legitimate reasons. The mercury preservative thimerosal probably shouldn't have been in vaccines. It was taken out for precautionary reasons. Since then, science has come in and we can't detect the correlation between a rise in autism diagnoses and use of childhood vaccines. ... So, at some point you have to let go. But that hasn't happened. Instead, there's a conspiracy theory and people have appointed themselves as experts on this. It is really unfortunate. Vaccine denial really is dangerous. The people who try to avoid vaccination, who believe this, are not stupid. They're not disadvantaged. ... So the distrust of science -- this is not something a better high school education would have saved them from.
Has the Internet hurt or helped science? It's indifferent, at best. There is good information on the Web about science; there's bad information on the Web about science. Neither one triumphs. Atomized communities go to one but not the other. Let's go back to vaccines. You have Age of Autism -- that's the vaccine autism site. On the other hand, you go to ScienceBlogs or the blogging world that I inhabit and we're all about debunking this. You're not going to get much cross-pollination, except for people lobbing missiles across cyberspace at each other. That's the problem of science on the Internet right there.
How has religion deepened the divide between Americans and science? There is just a ton of data on Americans, why they don't accept science, particularly evolution, and what their views on religion are. And there is zero doubt that religion is the block. They are told by their pastors from the pulpit ... that evolution is an assault on their identity, their moral universe and their ability to raise children who get taught this. So there's been an attempt to create a hermetically sealed environment in the conservative Christian community that keeps this stuff out. And that's a huge problem. The world of science is very angry about this, justifiably so.
What can scientists do to bridge the gap? They can learn about everybody else. They can understand everybody else and understand what the blocks are. What's preventing people from embracing science? We know it is religion, but do we really know why people are creationists? When I look at how many scientists approach the evolution issue, I don't see that understanding. If I read ScienceBlogs, what I see are endless eloquent refutations of the creationists based on science. Obviously, that doesn't convince anybody. And that's because people who don't believe in evolution are not driven by scientific considerations. So that's not how you should be trying to reach them.
Original article here.
Mr. Mooney was on NPR's Talk of the Nation that same day..."Can 'Unscientific America' Be Science Literate?"
Then Mr. Mooney had a Q&A in the Chicago Tribune Sept. 1, 2009 - I love his answer to the last question - a very humble and inspiring thought....
Chris Mooney: Q. and A. with author of 'Unscientific America'
Lori Kozlowski, Tribune Newspapers
September 1, 2009
"Science has become much less cool," writes journalist Chris Mooney in "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future." Mooney and co-author Sheril Kirshenbaum seek to explain why Americans minimize science in a time when, they say, we will need it most. "Americans built the bomb, reached the moon, decoded the genome, and created the Internet," the authors write. "And yet today this country is also home to a populace that, to an alarming extent, ignores scientific advances or outright rejects scientific principles." Mooney discusses that issue, along with why the decision to demote Pluto is significant, his concerns about vaccine rejecters and what scientists must do.
Why does the decision to reclassify Pluto matter? I was listening to science writer Dava Sobel ... talking about the Pluto decision and how she was on the committee that would have kept Pluto. And how the other astronomers didn't get it and overruled her committee. She said: People really care about this. The Pew Research Center did a study recently about the public understanding of science. And they asked what people knew. People knew that Pluto was no longer a planet. And they don't know many things. It is exceedingly rare that science does anything that reaches almost everybody anymore. So, when you get your moment to put it all before everybody, you don't want it to be a Pluto moment.
What about the vaccine skeptic movement? It bubbled up originally for legitimate reasons. The mercury preservative thimerosal probably shouldn't have been in vaccines. It was taken out for precautionary reasons. Since then, science has come in and we can't detect the correlation between a rise in autism diagnoses and use of childhood vaccines. ... So, at some point you have to let go. But that hasn't happened. Instead, there's a conspiracy theory and people have appointed themselves as experts on this. It is really unfortunate. Vaccine denial really is dangerous. The people who try to avoid vaccination, who believe this, are not stupid. They're not disadvantaged. ... So the distrust of science -- this is not something a better high school education would have saved them from.
Has the Internet hurt or helped science? It's indifferent, at best. There is good information on the Web about science; there's bad information on the Web about science. Neither one triumphs. Atomized communities go to one but not the other. Let's go back to vaccines. You have Age of Autism -- that's the vaccine autism site. On the other hand, you go to ScienceBlogs or the blogging world that I inhabit and we're all about debunking this. You're not going to get much cross-pollination, except for people lobbing missiles across cyberspace at each other. That's the problem of science on the Internet right there.
How has religion deepened the divide between Americans and science? There is just a ton of data on Americans, why they don't accept science, particularly evolution, and what their views on religion are. And there is zero doubt that religion is the block. They are told by their pastors from the pulpit ... that evolution is an assault on their identity, their moral universe and their ability to raise children who get taught this. So there's been an attempt to create a hermetically sealed environment in the conservative Christian community that keeps this stuff out. And that's a huge problem. The world of science is very angry about this, justifiably so.
What can scientists do to bridge the gap? They can learn about everybody else. They can understand everybody else and understand what the blocks are. What's preventing people from embracing science? We know it is religion, but do we really know why people are creationists? When I look at how many scientists approach the evolution issue, I don't see that understanding. If I read ScienceBlogs, what I see are endless eloquent refutations of the creationists based on science. Obviously, that doesn't convince anybody. And that's because people who don't believe in evolution are not driven by scientific considerations. So that's not how you should be trying to reach them.
Original article here.
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